Last weekend, Kyrie told me that she wanted to try riding her bike without training wheels. This is a goal that we have wanted to achieve, but did not have an opportunity to work on over the summer (Darren & I had very little time because of our work maintaining the garden). I was a little doubtful of success, but I got the tools and went straight to work removing the training wheels.
I called Kyrie outside and we tried a few runs down the driveway. As I held onto the back of the bicycle seat, I tried to break down the task into understandable fragments of information. She was nervous and frustrated easily. I had to balance providing information and not overwhelming her with instruction. I wanted her to keep practicing, feeling that progress...success even was near at hand, but I did not want to become overbearing and push her frustration to the point that she abandoned the endeavor altogether. I continued to encourage her while emphasizing balance and her control over the situation and the bicycle.
I came to the conclusion that the difficulty and therefore the focus on my instruction had to be how to start the bike. I told her how to move the pedals, how to push forward until she could bring both feet onto the pedals.
And then she was riding... three feet, five feet, twenty feet. We stopped to rest, jubilant with success. We showed Darren when he came home. The next day, I would watch out the window as she rode by herself in the driveway and then in the yard. The following afternoons, she would be outside riding all over the yard. This success was even sweeter because she did it all on her own! We are very proud of Kyrie and her accomplishment!
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